Productivity Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Productivity Tip: When and how to use paper vs software

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (May 14th, 2013)

One of the problems with giving people advice is that certain topics are so... personal. Our previous experiences, current technology and outside pressures inevitably corral us into a particular line of thinking or acting. So it is with the debate ...

Productivity Tip: Using specialized lists for specific use cases

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (May 7th, 2013)

It's time for this week's Productivity Tips column. While I use OmniFocus for just about everything, there are times when I prefer other task managers to handle certain things. Many productivity gurus advise against using more than one tool to list ...

Productivity Tip: Take a break

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 23rd, 2013)

In the past couple of installments of TUAW's productivity tips, I've discussed a number of ways to keep you focused on your tasks. Managing those tasks will be the next big-picture topic, but this week I wanted to keep it short and simple, just ...

Extract App Resource Icons with AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Apr 22nd, 2013)

Whether I'm preparing for a demo or writing an article, blog post, book, or technical documentation, I often find myself performing the same set of repetitive steps. I need to navigate into an app's packaged resources folder, find one or more icon ...

Daily iPhone App: ListBook: A list app with location based reminders and more

by Matt Tinsley (Apr 19th, 2013)

NoIdentity's ListBook (US$1.99) is a straightforward list compiler that looks great and has some well-implemented features to help you get on top of all those lists and things to get done. The list maker lets you compile numerous lists and add ...

Productivity Tip: Focus time

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 16th, 2013)

In order to stay productive, you must accomplish tasks. Unfortunately, as communications have sped up and become omnipresent, our focus has been sliced and diced to the paper-thin setting. How many times a day does a calendar invite, Facebook ...

Productivity Tip: Time for timers

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 9th, 2013)

Every day you have the same 24 hours as the rest of us to get what is likely a crushing amount of work done and out of your way so you can spend some time relaxing. Or, as one author has framed it, you have 168 hours in a week to accomplish ...

Productivity Tip: Read the manual, or take a class

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 2nd, 2013)

There was a time when Mac owners scoffed at their PC-loving counterparts, who had to pore over paper manuals to grok the essentials of a software program before they tried to use it. When graphical user interfaces were introduced, a lot of focus ...

Big upgrades for premium Evernote users

by Brett Terpstra (Apr 14th, 2010)

It's been no big secret that I'm a fan and frequent user of Evernote. It's useful, both as a memory augmentation and as a general information collection utility that makes it easy to locate what I need, when I need it. There are a couple of things ...

Screenshot Plus and iWork: the poor man's screenshot editing suite

by Sang Tang (Mar 25th, 2010)

Despite their office productivity leanings, the iWork suite of apps (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) also serve as good image editors. With each app, you can crop and mask an image, as well as create alpha channels. While a handful of useful paid-for ...

Things coming to iPad, updates to 1.3

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Mar 17th, 2010)

At the end of his latest blog post, Cultured Code's Jürgen Schweizer revealed that the company is working on a version of Things for the iPad. The announcement isn't that surprising, especially given that The Omni Group announced at the ...

Microsoft updates Office for Mac 2008 and 2004

by Sang Tang (Mar 9th, 2010)

Microsoft has just released updates to the 2004 and 2008 versions of Microsoft Office. According to the company, the updates, which weigh in at 9.7 MB and 221.5 MB respectively, provide "fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to ...

Postbox adds Things and OmniFocus support

by Brett Terpstra (Mar 9th, 2010)

The first time I heard about Postbox, it was a relatively new email client for the Mac. Based on the details in the first announcement and my trial run, I was very intrigued. I recall telling the rest of TUAW that -- if its stated goals were achieved ...

Mac 101: Going Commando with Command-key shortcuts in Mac OS X

by Sang Tang (Mar 6th, 2010)

One of the adjustments those new to the Mac need to make is to familiarize themselves with the Command key. Although I switch hit and use Windows at work and a Mac when I'm not working, I've always preferred it over Control. Its proximity next to the ...

Mac OS X's Automator: I learned it by watching you!

by Sang Tang (Mar 4th, 2010)

Mac OS X's Automator has the ability to perform specific tasks from its given set of actions. For example, with a Finder-based action, you can batch move copy, move or rename files that fit a certain criteria. Similarly, image-based actions allow ...

TaskPaper for iPhone, simplified to-do lists go mobile

by Brett Terpstra (Feb 23rd, 2010)

TaskPaper, from the developer of WriteRoom, has been around for a while, and we've been talking about it since version 1.0. After what seems like a long wait, TaskPaper for iPhone is out. The super-simple to-do list with surprisingly robust ...